Help!

[geophyrd]

Ok, got problems going on with my Reader. I wrote in once before, but the problems have escalated. I'll try to organize thoughts below:

1. I've been using a combination of LIBRIS and Book Designer to format books that I've found on the web. Then I convert them to LRF. Unfortunately, sometimes (for no apparent reason), the title goes away, or the author's name goes away. Sometimes they switch. Huh? Why isn't there a way to set them up in the Reader software? Other than the 'Collections' function, is there anyway to group series? The problems that I'm having with titles are interfering with setting up collections correctly.
   
2. I've noticed that the number of books in my Reader keeps changing. In a 2 hour span, it went from around 500 books to around 250 to 375. Not sure what's missing...
   
3. In the Reader software, the 'sort' function doesn't work. It changes the order of the library, but not in any readily consistent way. I need a way to get the documents organized, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do this. It isn't alphabetic, not that I can see.
   
4. When I try to delete some items in Reader software (covers for example), the software hangs and freezes. Now I can't apparently get things like this out of my library.
   
5. On advice I took from this forum, in addition to the 512Mg SD card, I also got a 2 gig MemStick. The mem stick isn't showing up in the Reader software. I checked...it is FAT formatted. Is one faster than the other (SD vs. MemStick?)

I guess that'll do for now. Its a shame that such a cool toy is being subverted so severely by its support software...

[Roy White]

geophyrd, I have a sony 500.

I've had it for about a year. It works flawlessly if I keep less than 200 books in it. I bought a very fast 2 gig sd card hoping i would be able to lug around 3 or 4 thousand books on it but it begins having these issues at about 400 or so. I had to ruthlessly delete books culling them out until I got to about 200. Now I have no problems.

So I just keep the other 3 or 4 hundred books in a file and after i finish a book delete it from my reader. I think maybe the Sony is still in its infancy and as such has a small 'ram' or the equivalent component and can't process over 200 books very well. I bet their next effort will be able to handle thousands of books in memory but so far, patience is the word.
Its really not that big of a deal since I usually am only reading 5 to 10 books at once anyway.

Roy

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by geophyrd

Ok, got problems going on with my Reader. I wrote in once before, but the problems have escalated. I'll try to organize thoughts below:

1. I've been using a combination of LIBRIS and Book Designer to format books that I've found on the web. Then I convert them to LRF. Unfortunately, sometimes (for no apparent reason), the title goes away, or the author's name goes away. Sometimes they switch. Huh? Why isn't there a way to set them up in the Reader software? Other than the 'Collections' function, is there anyway to group series? The problems that I'm having with titles are interfering with setting up collections correctly.
   
2. I've noticed that the number of books in my Reader keeps changing. In a 2 hour span, it went from around 500 books to around 250 to 375. Not sure what's missing...
   
3. In the Reader software, the 'sort' function doesn't work. It changes the order of the library, but not in any readily consistent way. I need a way to get the documents organized, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do this. It isn't alphabetic, not that I can see.
   
4. When I try to delete some items in Reader software (covers for example), the software hangs and freezes. Now I can't apparently get things like this out of my library.
   
5. On advice I took from this forum, in addition to the 512Mg SD card, I also got a 2 gig MemStick. The mem stick isn't showing up in the Reader software. I checked...it is FAT formatted. Is one faster than the other (SD vs. MemStick?)

I guess that'll do for now. Its a shame that such a cool toy is being subverted so severely by its support software...

As Roy said, keeping 500 eBooks on your 505 is not a good idea. It tends to slow things down.

I do use eBook Library to manage my content on my 505 and I've never had any of the issues you are seeming to have. But then, I also don't have 500 eBooks loaded.

I suggest you drop LIBRIS for making eBooks. Book Designer or Libprs500 are much better for conent creation/conversion. I don't have a problem with eBooks from Book Designer losing any of the metadata. If you are truely having a problem with the metadata, I suggest installing libprs500 and using lrf-meta to edit the metadata so you can fix the title and the author.

As for issue #2, did you at one time set up auto sync? That could be messing with your contents when you plug in the 505 and run eBook Library.

For issue #3 you can create collections and using eBook Library change the order of how the books are in each collection. Once you have the books in the collection, open the collection (in eBook Library) and drag the books in the order you want. You'll see the numbers change to show you the current order.

If you have eBooks in a collection, you HAVE to delete the eBooks with eBook Library. If you do so using the 505 as a mass storage device, you can easily mess up the collections. Because the collection will have the eBooks in it but the 505 won't have them available. That's not a good thing for the 505. What you might have to do is get a pin and hit the reset button on the back of the 505. I did delete an eBook (that was part of a collection) once without eBook Library and had to reset the 505. Now I just do it via eBook Library.

I cannot say which type of memory is faster. I've never used memory stick. But some others have said that memory stick takes less power to run then SD.When you install the memory stick, does it show up in eBook Library? When the 505 is connected to the computer, does the memory stick show as a mass starage device?